Aftermath
by JeanB
Summary: The war was over and yet Hermione didn't feel like celebrating. Is it wrong to pray for Death to come and deliver your best friend? Hopefully you'll never have to think about it.


**Aftermath**

**Warning**: This is a very dark fic about the wasting that sometimes comes before death. If you are bothered by dark themes or non-gorey death please don't read this.

**Summary**: The war was over and yet Hermione didn't feel like celebrating. There are some things you just don't want anybody to experience and one of them is watching your best friend die a slow, undignified death.

**Rating**: R (just to be sure. There's no sex or violence but an extremely dark theme)

**Disclaimer**: We all know Harry Potter is owned by J.K. Rowling and I'm not even remotely talented enough to make money with it so on with the story.

**A/N**: This story is actually a couple of years old already but since I don't think I'll write anything new, I thought you might appreciate it...

The world was celebrating and all I felt was grief. No, that is not true, grief was what I should have felt. I knew I ought to have felt grief and yet all I felt was numbness. I felt hollow inside, the world lost all its sense to me and I felt so bone tired.

A tear rolled down my cheek. Why couldn't I feel grief?

Harry was dead.

He wasn't supposed to die. The war was over, we won and yet he didn't make it. Voldemort had this one last triumph, knowing that even though he was about to die, destroying the last horcrux would ultimately destroy Harry.

It took him almost two days to die. I was there, by his side.

I held his hand and watched over him, when he fell in and out of consciousness, haunted eyes wide open when he was waiting for the next spell of pain, eyes squeezed shut when the wave of agony washed over him and when his body was convulsing so much that it broke his bones. Unconsciousness was a blessing.

I watched as he slowly lost all his intellect until nothing he said made and sense at all.

I watched as the pain grew into his constant companion until he didn't have enough strength left to whimper and the only sign I had that the spell wasn't over yet was the look on his face.

I'm never going to forget that look. I never felt so helpless in my life.

Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were there, too, sometimes. They urged me to get some rest myself but I couldn't just leave him there. I couldn't just go to sleep when Harry was going through hell. I couldn't leave him while he was dying.

Mrs. Weasley would bring me hot chocolate when she came but I knew that she didn't have enough strength left to care for all of us. She tried to hide it, of course, but even in my despair I could see how shallow her face had become and how tired she looked.

Ron was only one room down from us. He was still in a coma but eventually he would make it. At least that's what we've been telling ourselves. There's only so much pain a soul can bear.

The hours before Harry died were the hardest in my life. Hard because my body screamed for rest and I refused to give in; hard because the longer his suffering went on the more the body in the bed resembled an insane stranger, the more it resembled a corpse.

There were times during these long hours where I was so tempted to end it all myself. It would have been a blessing. It would have been mercy. It would have been selfish because when I really thought about it thoughts of the end of Harry's suffering were not the only things that came to my mind. I thought about how I couldn't sit any longer and that, if I closed my eyes, I would fall asleep even though my best friend suffered. I thought about how the smell of sweat, vomit, urine, and faeces made me want to throw up or run out of the room. I wanted the screams and whimpers that nothing could soothe to stop. I thought about Harry after he found out that the last horcrux was going to kill him, green eyes pleading with me, telling me 'I don't want to die now.'

For all my Gryffindor courage, I was a coward that day. I couldn't show my best friend that last act of mercy. I couldn't kill him. So I watched him deteriorate before my eyes.

In the end there was nothing left but an empty shell and when he took his last breaths I prayed every time that this was the last one and cried when I heard the wheezing rattling of a new breath.

I sat there for a long time after he died, waiting for a new gasp, praying there'd be none. I still held his hand, when it turned cold and when they came to take him away I broke down and sobbed because the world was unfair. I sobbed because that was not the end Harry Potter deserved. I sobbed because I suddenly felt cold and lonely. I sobbed until I had no more tears left to cry and my sleep deprived body demanded its toll.

When I woke up my throat felt like sandpaper and my eyes burned even though there was hardly any daylight left. The house was silent. I moved to the stairs and heard muffled voices from the kitchen. The thought of facing the others was frightening. I didn't want to see them. I knew they would pity me and I didn't feel like I deserved it. I didn't want their pity. I didn't want to see their grief.


End file.
